The highest level volunteer service award of the Computer Society. A bronze medal and $5,000 are given for outstanding service to the profession at large, including significant service to the Computer Society or its predecessor organizations.

For outstanding service to both the Computer Society and the computing profession that continues to have enormous impact on responsible governance, high quality publications, conferences, and the international community.

For dedication and sustained long-term leadership resulting in the development of significant innovations in Computer Society products and services, especially in the area of printed and electronic publications.

1998

Edward A. Parrish

For continuing leadership to the society and the institute, particularly in the areas of education and publications.

1997

Duncan H. Lawrie

For your creativity, insight, and leadership of the society in many areas, but particularly for guiding the development of the Computer Society strategy for electronic publishing.

1996

Ming T. (Mike) Liu

For dedicated and outstanding services to the profession and to the IEEE Computer Society.

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 20 January 2015 – President-Emeritus of the IEEE Computer Society and longtime volunteer Rangachar Kasturi has been named 2015 recipient of the IEEE-CS Richard E. Merwin Award for Distinguished Service.

During the past three decades, Kasturi has served in many significant roles at the IEEE Computer Society, including as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and Vice President of the Publications, Conferences, and Member and Geographic Activities boards. He served as President in 2008.

Kasturi was cited for “exemplifying true volunteer spirit and commitment to excellence, and for significant and continuing contributions that support the vision and mission of the IEEE and the Computer Society.”

Over the years, he also served as Treasurer, Board of Governors member, and Board of Governors chair. He has represented the IEEE-CS on the Computing Research Association and the International Association for Pattern Recognition boards, and as general co-chair of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR). He led IEEE’s efforts to expand into India. He is a Fellow of IEEE and IAPR, and a Fulbright Scholar.

Kasturi has been the Douglas W. Hood Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida since 2003. His research interests are in computer vision and pattern recognition. He is an author of the textbook, “Machine Vision.”

Kasturi has directed projects on aircraft collision avoidance sponsored by NASA, performance evaluation of video content analysis algorithms sponsored by the Advanced Research and Development Activities (ARDA) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and document analysis for graphics recognition, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and industrial sponsors.

Born in Bangalore in 1949 to a family of teachers, he received the B.E. (Electrical) degree from Bangalore University in 1968 and worked as an engineer in India for 10 years before moving to the US in 1978 to attend Texas Tech University, where he received his MSEE and PhD degrees in 1980 and 1982 respectively.

After graduation, Kasturi joined the Pennsylvania State University. He credits former president Tse Yun Feng, who was heading Penn State’s computer engineering program, for introducing him to the IEEE Computer Society and its volunteer service opportunities.

The Merwin Award is given to individuals for outstanding volunteer service to the profession, including significant service to the Computer Society. The Society's highest award for volunteer service, the award consists of a bronze medal and a $5,000 honorarium.

Diamond, who served as 2003 IEEE Computer Society President, was cited "for distinguished leadership and service to the IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and the computing profession." He served on the IEEE Board of Directors in 2005-06 and 2009-10, and chaired its Marketing & Sales and Strategic Planning Ad Hoc Committees. Diamond was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro Magazine from 1995-98 and was a founding member and Vice Chair of the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors in 2001-02.

Global Standards Officer and General Manager of the Industry Standards Office at EMC Corp., Diamond has more than 30 years of senior management, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, business development, industry standards, strategic planning, and engineering management experience in computer hardware, software, and semiconductors.

He was previously Director of Product Management for Intercloud Computing at Cisco Systems, where he built what was at the time the largest AWS-compatible cloud outside of Amazon, and was responsible for Cisco's cloud computing industry standards program. Before that, he was Vice President of Marketing at Equator Technologies, a very-long-instruction-word signal-processing semiconductor startup; Vice President of Business Development at Tycho Networks; Director of Mergers and Acquisitions at National Semiconductor; Director of SPARC Marketing at Sun Microsystems; Director of Microprocessor Architecture and Applications Engineering at National Semiconductor; General Manager of the Honeywell/Synertek microprocessor division; and Research Associate in biomedical signal processing at the University of California San Francisco Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Diamond is a prolific speaker on cloud computing, the Intercloud, and big data, recently serving as General Co-Chair of IEEE CloudCom, and has authored more than 20 technical publications on cloud computing, memory and microprocessor technology, signal processing, expert systems, and computer graphics. He received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Award.

The Merwin Award is given to individuals for outstanding volunteer service to the profession, including significant service to the Computer Society. The Society's highest award for volunteer service, the award consists of a bronze medal and a $5,000 honorarium. The award will be presented at the Computer Society's annual awards ceremony on Wednesday, 4 June in Seattle, Washington.

Chang Named IEEE Computer Society Merwin Award Winner

Carl K. ChangChang, professor and chair of the Iowa State University Department of Computer Science, was cited "for outstanding contributions and exemplary leadership and service to the IEEE Computer Society and the computing profession."

He served as IEEE Computer Society president in 2004, Computer's editor in chief from 2007-2010, and chairs many conferences, including the IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMSPAC).

Credited with helping create the Computer Society Industry Advisory Board during his tenure as Computer's EIC, Chang also previously served as IEEE Software editor in chief (1991-94), Magazine Operations Committee chair, Board of Governors member, vice president for Press Activities, vice president and first vice president for Educational Activities, and chair of the IEEE Meetings and Services Committee.

Chang received a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University in 1982, and worked for GTE Automatic Electric and Bell Laboratories before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984 and Iowa State University in 2002. He has published extensively about software engineering, net-centric computing and successful aging.

Chang, an IEEE and AAAS Fellow, is the recipient of the Computer Society's Meritorious Service Award, Outstanding Contribution Award, and Golden Core Award; and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. In 2006, he received the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Marin Drinov Medal, and the IBM Faculty Award in 2006, 2007, and 2009.

Willis King Receives Top Volunteer Award

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 2 June, 2010 – Willis K. King, chair of the IEEE Computer Society's History Committee and Election Committee, has won the organization's highest volunteer award, the Richard E. Merwin Award for Distinguished Service. The recognition caps a four-decade-long record of active volunteer service for the Computer Society.

King served as president of the Computer Society in 2002. Prior to his presidency, he served as vice president for area activities (1987, 1988), vice president for educational activities (1997,1998), and as the second and first vice president he chaired the conferences and tutorials board (1999, 2000).

He was appointed IEEE Houston chapter chair from 1970-1975, the general chair of the second International Symposium on Computer Architecture in 1975, the IEEE Computer Society Southwestern Regional chair from 1976 to 1982, and the chair of the Distinguished Visitor's Program from 1980 to 1986.

An active volunteer in accreditation activities since the early 1980s, King participated in the establishment of an accreditation program for computer science and the formation of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB). From 1985 to 1991 he served as a founding member of the executive committee of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Commission, including as its chair in 1991. He was a member of the CSAB board from 1991-1997 and its president from 1993 to 1995. He received several distinguished services awards from CSAB and CSAC and was elected a fellow of CSAB.

King received the Dipl-Ing degree from the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany (1963), and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (1969), both in electrical engineering. He worked at the IBM Laboratorien, Germany, in 1963 and 1964.

Since 1969, King has been a computer science professor at the University of Houston, and served as its chair from 1979 to 1992. He is a professor emeritus of the University of Houston and a Fellow of both IEEE and the CSAB.

The Richard E. Merwin Award for Distinguished Service is given for outstanding volunteer service to the profession at large, including significant service to the IEEE Computer Society or its predecessor organizations. The award is for service as opposed to technical achievement.